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Friday Nov 03, 2006
An Audiobook In the Making
We were all gathered to watch Jonathan Lethem record a chunk of the audiobook version of his new novel, YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET, which Doubleday releases in March. For a brief excerpt of the audiobook, check out this exclusive MP3 made available here by RH Audio.
For those who, like me, had never seen an audiobook in action, it went pretty much like you'd expect a recording session to go: Lethem sat in an enclosed booth, visible to us via a one-way mirror but able to concentrate on reading necessary passages. Bronstein sat at a desk with a large-type format of the manuscript, interrupting Lethem as necessary if a flub took place or if extra noise cut in on the recording. Meanwhile, one of CDM's own sound engineers monitored the level of sound, but the feed remained raw: any mastering or editing would take place after the fact. A general rule is that three hours of recording time equals one hour of an audiobook, which made most of us drop our jaws when Zitt bring up the unabridged version of Bill Clinton's MY LIFE - all 67 hours of it (a project that RH Audio didn't work on, but they did have the abridged version.) After about 90 minutes, D'Acierno, Zitt, Hirn and I took our leave, and on the walk back I peppered them with questions about working in the audiobook world. One thing that surprised me was the quick production turnaround time. Galleys of YOU DON'T LOVE ME YET are already circulating (and prepub reviews are available) but the audiobook is only being recorded now. How could that be? Turns out that audio can be processed very quickly to produce professional quality product, at lesser cost than a book manuscript. Most of the time, anyway; Zitt described the making of WORLD WAR Z's audiobook, which made use of so much voice-over talent (many of them working for scale) that recording took two months. As for print runs, Zitt said that the variation is so great from audiobook to audiobook he couldn't pin down a ballpark number. Eavesdropping on Lethem's audio session brought several realizations: first (as I suspected) it's damn hard work to record an audiobook, but it's also worth it for writers to invest some of their time in learning more about the process, even if reading isn't (or shouldn't be) their strongest suit. Second, that most people working on the audio side of publishing were book people first, audio geeks second. Will the future bring a reversal, where passionate audiophiles decide to corner the publishing market en masse because they happen to have a real love for books? Maybe - but only if the career option is made available to them. With that sector growing where others stagnate, I don't see why not... Email This Post |
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